Articles About Financing

More than $108 billion of commercial properties in the United States are now in default, foreclosure or bankruptcy.   That preliminary statistic is nearly double the amount reported at the start of 2009, according to New York-based Real Capital Analytics, Inc. At the end of June, 5,315 buildings were reported to be in financial distress.  Hotels […]

To purge their balance sheets of debt and avoid future writedowns, more and more U.K. banks are considering plans to transfer commercial property loans into REITs. Such strategies entail using REITs as publicly traded “exit vehicles” to limit the losses they and their borrowers face. The British Property Federation is currently pushing the idea to […]

A new Wall Street Journal analysis shows that U.S. banks are charging off bad commercial mortgages at the fastest pace in almost two decades.  At the current clip, losses on loans that financed apartments, retail centers, offices, and other commercial real estate could total nearly $30 billion by the end of the year. Thousands of […]

In his semi-annual testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that although the economy is exhibiting “tentative signs of stabilization,” he plans to maintain a “highly accommodative” monetary policy for the time being.  According to Bernanke, “The pace of decline appears to have slowed significantly.  In light of the […]

Ponzi scheme swindler Bernie Madoff has some notorious neighbors at the federal prison in Butner, NC, that he now calls home.  According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the medium-security Butner facility houses 3,400 inmates, including Omar Abdel-Rahman, the terrorist known as the “Blind Sheik”, who plotted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  Also imprisoned […]

America’s financial capital is now Washington, D.C. With Congress and the White House acting forcefully to stop the bleeding resulting from the worldwide financial crisis, numerous investors and brokers are relocating from New York to Washington because that’s where the action is these days. One of the nation’s healthiest metropolitan areas, Washington is benefiting from […]

Economic development organizations are stepping in to help plug the credit hole.  We all know what the economy is like today, and it is unlikely that the industrial and commercial real estate markets will soon turn around. As an economic developer, I see another side of the economy where both communities and businesses are seeking opportunities […]

Ernst & Young recently conducted a distressed debt survey to determine who will be the most active direct sellers of non-performing loan portfolios.  The results are interesting. 36 percent responded it will be regional banks and thrifts 32 percent responded it will be money center banks 13 percent responded it will be the United States […]

While the commercial real estate market waits to bottom out, dozens of smaller buyers who pooled their dollars to buy office buildings during the boom may be in worse shape than large institutional investors.  These tenants-in-common (TIC) funds, which allow smaller investors to own multiple office buildings together, are facing the same issues as giant […]

Moody’s reiterated its February analysis of CMBS loans,  noting that the majority of 2006 – 2008 ratings of conduit/fusion and large-loan deals are still stable.  The ratings agency warns that the assumptions hold up “as long as conditions in the commercial real estate market and the general economy do not weaken.” Since February, “property prices […]